


Untitled (07079)

by coffee-in-bed (littlemel)



Category: Garden State (2004)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-26
Updated: 2005-11-26
Packaged: 2018-03-20 01:41:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3631857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlemel/pseuds/coffee-in-bed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>i'm so uncaring, do far too much fucking swearing</i><br/>and if you read through my behaviour, you'll find i'm a creep<br/>-damien rice, childish</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled (07079)

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://shellies.livejournal.com/profile)[**shellies**](http://shellies.livejournal.com/)'s [Two Lines challenge](http://shanalle.com/twolines/) 2005, posted one month and one day late.

_Carol_

She goes into Mark's room while he sleeps, the late afternoon sunlight thick with dust motes and stales swirls of smoke, slicing through the perpetually drawn blinds. She'll pull the blanket up under his chin and sit at the edge of his bed, like she used to when he was small, after his father left and she would stay up all night, afraid that if she slept, Mark would sneak out too.

"Mom, what the fuck are you doing in here?" he mumbles as he rolls over, away from the light and from her. She smooths his hair back from his face, his cheek stubble-rough under her fingers, and he bats her hand away. "I'm trying to _sleep_."

"I'm leaving for work in a minute, I just came in to say good-bye."

"Bye." He tugs the blanket over his head, a leftover habit from childhood that means she is dismissed, but she doesn't move. She fishes in her purse for a cigarette, Virginia Slims 120s, ridiculously long and skinny, comically feminine between her work-worn fingers. The hiss of her lighter is followed by Mark's impatient sigh from beneath the blanket, his eyes appearing over the ragged hem. "Mom, _what_?"

She draws on her cigarette, cheeks hollowing as she sucks in a lungful of smoke; she worries about him, still, always. He's so quick to anger, to lash out, and she thinks maybe she's gone about this all wrong, this parenting thing, that she's made a mistake in trying to be his friend as well as his mother, that he might resent her for it. But she's always done the best she can, working two jobs to keep up a house that always needed fixing, to put food on the table. She watches his face for a moment, wondering whether he's happy, if _she_ is.

"I did okay by you, right?" she asks, touching his cheek. A fleck of ash drifts down and lands in his hair, but he doesn't shake her off this time. "I mean, we did alright, didn't we?"

"Yeah," he says quietly, his face hidden in her shadow. He reaches for her cigarette and she lets him have it; she didn't really want it anyway. "Yeah, Mom, we did."

 

 

_Jesse_

When he bought the house his mother hired a decorator from New York, who came in with fabric swatches and paint samples and talked about crown molding and imported Italian light fixtures. Jesse told Mark about her the first time he came to see the house; Mark just scoffed, and Jesse was grateful that someone else was as unenthusiastic about the whole endeavor as he was.

"Maybe I should just let her do it," Jesse says later that night. They're sitting in front of the fireplace on G.I. Joe sleeping bags, the same ones they slept in in his basement as kids. "I mean, whatever, right?"

"This is like the fucking Playboy Mansion and shit, don't let some uptight asshole come in here and fuck it all up." Mark crumples the Doritos bag and chucks it into the fireplace; the flames turn briefly, brilliantly blue as it catches. He plucks the joint from Jesse's fingers. "There's so much shit in my house you have to move piles from one place to another just to sit down. There's room to fucking _breathe_ here, you know? It's your house, man, do whatever you want with it."

Jesse looks around at the high ceilings and naked walls, the hardwood floor reflecting the fire. Growing up, he'd known kids who lived up here on the hill, and remembers their houses as bare as this one, like they were waiting to be lived in; only half-furnished and no sense of _home_ , despite the family inside its walls. He'd fill this house with friends, with music and laughter; he doesn't need anything but that.

"You want anything from the kitchen?" Mark shakes his head and Jesse stands, takes a running start and slides into the kitchen on his socked feet. He grabs a beer from the fridge and the designer's contract from the island, doubling back to dig a bag of Oreos out of the pantry.

Mark's at the window when he comes back, staring out at the steam coming off the heated pool. He snatches the Oreos and stuffs one in his mouth, nodding at the contract in Jesse's hand. "What's that?"

"Nothing." Jesse pitches the sheaf of papers into the fire, watching the edges curl and blacken.

Mark shrugs. "Where's the phone? Let's get some fucking people over here."

 

 

_Sam_

Thursday nights she goes for Happy Hour with the girls from her office, but by ten her coworkers have all gone, back to boyfriends, families, dogs needing to be walked and fed. She abandons their empty table for a seat at the bar and orders another drink; she's got time to kill before Large gets here.

Mark comes in with Jesse and four girls in tow, and Jesse stops to say hello, wrapping Sam in a one-armed hug. Mark lingers at the bar, leaning back on his elbows, while the others take a booth in the back.

"You don't like me, do you?" he asks.  
  
Sam laughs, wondering if she heard him correctly. "Excuse me?"

"You don't like me."

Her laughter dies in her throat when she realizes he's being serious; she's not sure her vow not to lie anymore should extend to something like this. Chewing on her straw for a second, she settles for something true enough in its own right: "I don't know you."

"S'not what I asked, though, is it?" He smiles, and it's almost disarming, how different he looks. But the smile never quite reaches his eyes, and she's not fooled. She's known too many guys like him.

"No. But it's still true."

"Look." He pauses to flag down the bartender. "No offense, but I don't really give a shit either way, okay?"

"Then why did you ask?"

"I wanted to see if you'd lie." The bartender brings his beer, and Mark flicks a five dollar bill onto the bar top, grabs the glass and turns back to Sam. "And I appreciate that you didn't, okay? So don't backpedal."

"I wasn't-"

He cuts her off with a wave of his hand. "Don't worry, I'm not gonna tell Large." He walks away, to the booth in the corner, wedging himself between two of the girls.

Sam stares after him for a long moment before looking away, half-embarrassed and half-ashamed. She wiggles a little in her seat, makes a chirping sound like a baby bird and twirls her straw between her fingers like a baton, but it doesn't make her feel any better.

 

 

_Large_  
  
Parties at Jesse's become just another way to pass the time, the flood of people constant and ever-changing. During the week it's mostly people Large knew growing up, who hound him about LA and ask with varying degrees of interest about why he came back after so long. On the weekends the rooms swell with college kids.

By the middle of November, 4:30 in the afternoon looks more like midnight, making the days seem simultaneously longer and shorter. Large goes to sleep and wakes up in the dark, and the days run together in a blur of cheap beer and homegrown dope; even Sam becomes a blur. In some ways, it's not so different from LA and the Lithium-haze he was so used to before, but it's different in all the ways that matter, that make him feel alive.

"I don't think I've ever seen you like this," Mark says. There's the sound of breaking glass from inside the house. He smirks, shaking his head, but his eyes never leave Large's face. His expression, his voice, are vaguely accusatory.

"Like what?" Large starts to walk around the perimeter of the pool, one foot carefully placed in front of the other. The stones are slippery with rain; he wonders what would happen if he fell in.

"You know. Happy."

Large stops, blinking up at the moon. "I don't know if I've ever _been_ happy. Before now." He laughs, but it's humorless. "How fucked up is that?"

Mark smiles, a little crookedly, but doesn't say anything. He lights a cigarette from a crumpled pack in his jeans and backs out of the circle of light from the cabana. Large starts walking again, feeling Mark's gaze on his back.

"What about you?" Large asks. He steps onto the diving board and bounces on the balls of his feet a few times before stepping off again, back onto the rain-slicked stones.

"What _about_ me?"

"Are you happy?"

Mark is silent for a long moment. Large sees his shoulders rise and fall as he shrugs, crushing his cigarette under his boot as he moves back into the light. His eyes, defiant and mirthless, are the same color as the water. "I have my moments." He shoves his hands in his pockets. "Let's go in, it's fucking cold out here."


End file.
